


To one who loved not poetry

by Greekhoop



Category: Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: Berlin (City), Chaptered, Crossdressing, F/F, Historical, Mongolia, Motherhood, Multiple Pairings, Paris (City), Russian Frontier, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-02
Updated: 2011-12-02
Packaged: 2017-10-26 19:00:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/286794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greekhoop/pseuds/Greekhoop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gabrielle goes to the ends of the earth, and then comes back again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. With flowers fair adorn thy lustrous hair

Lestat thought she had left Cairo to explore the Valley of the Kings, and Gabrielle saw no reason to correct his assumption.

She had not lied to him, she reminded herself for what must have been the thousandth time, as she disembarked from her carriage on the Champs Elysees. Though their relationship had changed since Lestat had saved her from death, they had not been in their new roles for so long that Gabrielle did not sometimes still think of him as her son. She had made too much of a habit of lying to her family in her past life; had said, “No, nothing is wrong” or “It doesn’t pain me much at all” too many times, and she wished for no more untruths between them.

So far, she didn’t think she was off to a great start.

Gabrielle started down the street, sticking close to the storefronts where there were shadows. She was still not entirely accustomed to her masculine clothing. Though she had made careful study of the proper way to walk, to speak, to gesture, Gabrielle still felt sure that her everyone who chanced to glance her way was doing so because they saw through her disguise.

In a fit of insecurity, she drew up short in the street and scanned their thoughts, certain that every pair of eyes would be trained upon that inverted V where the legs of her trousers met at the crotch. Even her husband had never seen that part of her before. Conjugal relations between them had played out only after every light was extinguished, and even then only with the hem of Gabrielle’s night dress lifted no higher than was strictly necessary.

She took careful account, but it seemed no one had noticed her deception. Gabrielle was about to look again to be sure, but a heavy figure jostled her from behind. It did not budge her, but she let out a yelp of surprise.

A laborer in his shirtsleeves and an apron of coarse leather nudged her out of the way so he could get by.

Gabrielle gasped out an apology, and she turned down the next narrow alleyway she encountered. There, she scaled a wall and took to the rooftops. She could breathe more easily up there, away from the press of the crowd, without scores of judgmental eyes on her.

She could find her way to the Theatre des Vampires only when she didn’t think about it. She made her mind a blank and let her feet carry her to the familiar old playhouse. The sidewalk outside was swarming, though within a sold out performance was already in progress. Gabrielle let herself in by the stage door and slipped into one of the dressing rooms. She secured herself in a corner behind the wardrobe, where she could watch without being seen. She had not been invited here, after all, and she preferred to take account of the situation before showing herself.

Nicolas’ violin drifted up from the cracks in the floorboards. The sound seemed to come from everywhere at once, and Gabrielle still thought it was beautiful, though she had long since fallen in love with the strange tones and scales of the music of Arabia.

Gabrielle let the music lull her, and she fell so deeply under its spell that she did not notice the footsteps of the performers filing offstage. She wasn’t aware that the show had ended and now Nicolas was only playing the coda until the door of the dressing room swung open to admit a familiar figure.

Eleni was dressed in layers of black gauze. They hung shapeless about her now, but when she danced they must have cut strange shapes and geometries in the air. As Gabrielle watched, she peeled off the veils and flung them over the back of the chaise; then, before Gabrielle could think to lower her eyes out of modesty, Eleni had stripped off her leotard and tossed it after the rest.

She moved so quickly then that Gabrielle caught only glimpses of her. She was dark; the hair between her legs and the soft down in her armpits was almost black. Her hips were trim and boyish, her breasts tiny, her long legs corded with muscle. Eleni had the body of a dancer, and Gabrielle wondered if that was what she had done before she was turned. She did not have Lestat’s natural charisma and ease in the spotlight, but she had the quiet determination that might make a girl with few means into someone of notoriety.

Eleni slipped into a silk robe and tied it loosely, then she bent over the dressing table and began to remove her makeup with cold cream. Beneath the grinning skull that had been painted on her face, she was smiling.

“My dear, are you going to hide there all night?”

Gabrielle caught her breath. She slipped out from her place behind the wardrobe, feeling a guilty blush spread across her cheeks. “I didn’t mean to spy…”

“A good thing, too. Your heart was racing so fast I could hear you from down the hall.”

She wiped off the last of the stage makeup and turned to take Gabrielle by the shoulders. She pressed brief kisses to both of her cheeks.

“You know, you really look dashing like that. If I’m ever in need of rescue from some harrowing distress, I hope it’s you who saves me.”

Gabrielle wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she only murmured, “Thank you.”

Eleni’s face softened into a curious smile. “Where’s that boy of yours tonight?”

“He didn’t come,” Gabrielle said. “He’s back in Egypt.”

“You two have been on the move, haven’t you? I’d much rather stick to civilization, personally. For all its faults, at least I can get a decent pair of shoes.”

She sighed. “It’s just as well Lestat didn’t come. Nicolas is still livid. The poor dear. He’s just so… sensitive.”

“Lestat is, too,” Gabrielle blurted out, though whether she intended it as a defense or as an excuse she could not say. “What I mean is, it’s why they loved each other so.”

“And now why they hate each other, I suppose.”

“I suppose…” Gabrielle sounded skeptical, though.

“At any rate,” Eleni breezed on, before the conversation could take an awkward turn, “I’m glad you’re here. I’m in need of a date this evening. The Marquis was so impressed by our performance that he has invited us to a soiree. Laurent is usually my escort for such events, but he’s off playing Patrocles to some big strong Achilles tonight.”

“I don’t understand,” Gabrielle said.

“Fortunately,” Eleni went on, “I have a perfectly handsome, respectable young gentleman right here.”

***

They shared a meal at the Marquis’ estate: A middle-aged man who claimed to be freshly returned from safari in Africa, and who delighted the partygoers with his tales, until Gabrielle calmly and politely proved that the extent of his knowledge about the continent was derived entirely from adventure serials.

He stormed out into the garden, and Gabrielle followed with the intent to apologize to him. She knew how touchy a man’s pride could be, after all. Before she got a chance to say a word, Eleni had set upon him, and Gabrielle was forced to drink or else risk leaving a stain on the walk that might be discovered later.

“I’m sorry,” she said to Eleni as the two of them secured the corpse under a rose bush. They would retrieve it and dump it in the Seine later, when the guests had gone.

“For what?” Eleni replied.

“I’m afraid I made a very bad impression.”

“It doesn’t matter. There are always other soirees. And other Marquis for that matter. I thought that nasty blowhard deserved everything he got.”

She nudged the man’s hand out of sight with the toe of her shoe. “Let’s go. I’m bored.”

Gabrielle nodded, relieved, and followed Eleni over the high wall of the garden and out on to the street. Eleni fumbled a little hiking her heavy skirts over the top of the wall, and Gabrielle watched her, knowing that she wanted to see how much of Eleni’s leg she would be able to glimpse when she lifted her hem. Knowing, yet powerless to look away.

A moment later, Eleni descended silently onto the street.

“I guess I should have worn my swashbuckling clothes like you,” she said, casting a quick smile in Gabrielle’s direction. She pushed a tight black ringlet of hair off her forehead, tucking it back into place. Even offstage she wore too much makeup, Gabrielle thought; her cheeks were spotted with rouge and her lips had been painted the color of plums. It didn’t do her any favors, hiding her vampiric pallor beneath powder that was almost as white.

They walked along the river bank together. The man they had fed from had been drinking for most of the night, and Gabrielle could feel her head humming as the wine worked through her. Eleni must have been a little drunk too, for after a while she reached over and slipped her hand into Gabrielle’s.

“What do you think Lestat is doing right now?” she asked.

“Sitting in the ex-patriot salon and pretending he’s in Paris, I imagine,” said Gabrielle. "Why do you ask?"

“What do you think he thinks you’re doing?”

Gabrielle frowned slightly. “I don’t know.”

“No?”

“He doesn’t think I’m here; that much I know. As for the rest…” She shrugged. “He doesn’t concern himself with what I’m thinking about.”

“That’s a shame?”

“Is it?” Gabrielle smiled, but it did not reach her eyes. “I’m his mother. He doesn’t think of me like that. If you had a child, you’d understand.”

“Laurent’s my child.” Eleni caught the skeptical look Gabrielle cast in her direction. “I mean, I gave him the blood. I’ve given it to other people, too, but with him it was different. He was so young, and when he fell sick I wanted to protect him…”

Eleni trailed off. “I guess it’s not really the same, is it?”

“No. It’s not.”

Gabrielle felt Eleni’s grip tighten. She knew it was meant to be reassuring, and she felt guilty for thinking of it as an uncomfortable pressure.

“Maybe he’s your child,” Eleni said. “But he’s not a child any more. He’s a grown man.”

“To you he is,” Gabrielle said. With a flick of her wrist, she disengaged her hand. “I have to leave for Cairo tomorrow evening.”

She had gone on a few steps without noticing that Eleni had stopped. Curious, Gabrielle turned to look back at her, but she was now too far away to make out her expression.

“I don’t want you to go because of me,” Eleni said.

“I won’t be,” Gabrielle said. And she had a way of making herself almost believe it.


	2. Some say a fleet of ships is the loveliest sight on this dark earth

In the dead of winter, she fled into the Altai Mountains, and the woman on horseback followed. It was a gamble on Gabrielle’s part; those soaring peaks that bucked up suddenly from the surrounding steppe were treacherous even for a vampire. From October until April, food was so scarce as to be almost non-existent, and the sheer mountain slopes were buffeted constantly by bitter and icy winds. Gabrielle was young, still coming into her powers, but she was not reckless. She would not have attempted the crossing were she not being pursued.

She had first seen the woman on horseback five days ago, but there had been signs of her even before that. There were hoof prints some meters out from where Gabrielle made her grave each night, and occasionally the drained carcass of a marmot or a hare. The rider had made no attempt to disguise her presence, nor to hide what she was, but she had made no attempt to approach Gabrielle either. She was content to keep her distance and observe, night after night. This was precisely what Gabrielle had left Europe to escape.

She had taken to the mountains then, hoping the gesture alone would be enough to make her thoughts on the matter clear, but the rider had followed her without hesitation or fear. Every place that Gabrielle stumbled or faltered, she ascended with practiced eased, finding horse trails where Gabrielle had seen only sheer cliffs.

Gabrielle pressed on, her resentment driving her long past when her courage had given out. She refused to accept that she had found another of their kind in this remote corner of the world, only to become subject to the same tedious games and artificial laws that Armand and his coven had enforced in Paris.

Not that the name Armand would broker much recognition here, so there was at least that to ease her spite. Armand, Santino, even the great and ancient Marius; all those names spoken with such quiet reverence in Europe would be nothing but collections of random syllables to the vampires who inhabited these lonely places. Gabrielle felt that this was true, that it must be true, and yet why should it be? The world was not so small as the bourgeoisies would like to believe, and she was surely not the first on either continent to take it into her head to wander.

Then, on the third night, Gabrielle fell. It was just as she hauled herself up the last stretch of a near-vertical climb. A ridge of rock had protected her from the wind for most of the ascent, and as she moved beyond it she forgot to brace herself. The gust tore her from the mountain; she struggled to find a place to grip, but there was only ice and dry powdery snow that came free in her hands.

She saw the black sky without a single star in it, the dingy gray of the mountain, and she was not lost. She could orient herself in space as she fell. The rattle of the wind in her clothes was the only sound she heard, for she did not cry out. She hit an outcropping of rock and both her thighbones snapped. She turned over in the air, falling now as if she were laying down rather than standing up, and when she hit the next ledge her ribcage crumpled and blood ran from her mouth. She drove her hands into the snow, as deep as she could, but not deep enough to find a stone to grab onto.

It seemed that she did not fall again, but rather that the ledge receded into a gray and impenetrable gloom. The huge and brutish figures of men came out of that darkness to buffet her – once, twice – and then, all at once, she was still.

The muffler she had wrapped around her face had been torn off in the fall and Gabrielle could feel the frozen air filling her lungs with each breath. A shower of tiny white crystals rained down around her: snow that had been shaken loose the last time she struck the mountain.

She had thrice been through the pain of childbirth, and once through the agony of a slow death, and so Gabrielle considered herself something of an expert. What she felt now was like no human pain, but it was no duller for that. She was acutely conscious of being inside her broken body, but her mind remained steadfast and unclouded, as if her body were the horse and her mind the rider, separate but inseparable.

Gabrielle could not say how far she had fallen, how much ground she had lost. Worse still, she could not say with any certainty how long she had left before sunrise. She was not dead - it seemed unlikely that she would die of her injuries - but she was immobile and helpless. She didn’t know how long it would be before her bones knit themselves together enough to dig a grave that she could crawl into.

The day would find her like this. A weak, gray, almost invisible sun would rise behind the heavy veil of clouds, evincing no warmth, almost no light at all. It would burn her, though, and she would die cheated of even that final stolen glimpse of dawn.

She tried to struggle, to claw her way down into the earth, but her limbs would not obey. Moving only made her head swim, her vision slip out of focus. She knew that she was swooning, and it was then that she felt a force come up on her from the east. The sun, she thought, rising out of the black and starless sky. The sun…

But it was not.

The woman approached her without hesitation. She had left her horse behind, but when she walked on the snow she seemed to glide, to barely break the white crust on top of it. She wore a heavy red tunic, cut to her knees with leather breeches underneath. It was fastened with a wide belt on which glinted ornaments of gold. Her hair was bound back, her face almost lost behind the brim of a peaked fur hat. A great cloud of white breath erupted from the shadow of her collar with each exhalation.

She slid her arms under Gabrielle’s body and lifted her, not without gentleness but it was a jolt she could not bear. Her breath left her in a yelp, and she saw only darkness.

***

When she came to, she was inside. This was Gabrielle’s first thought, but it was not exactly correct. As she regained her senses enough to take a full account, she could see that she was under a low-hanging ridge of rock, one banked on two sides with snow so that there was only a narrow entrance on the side facing away from the wind.

It was not a spacious chamber, but there was room enough for Gabrielle to lay stretched out comfortably. The embers of a fire smoldered still near the entrance, and all at once Gabrielle remembered how she had come to be here. The realization that she was not alone was enough to shock her into action, but when she tried to sit up her body burst into fresh pain.

Gabrielle fell back upon the bed of rough furs, where she lay a moment, rallying herself. She was mortified that someone might come upon her in such an undignified state, and anxious that, whoever it might be, would see it as a sign of weakness. Wrapping an arm around her aching ribs, she tried again, more carefully, and this time she managed to maneuver herself up onto one elbow. She had no time to enjoy the small victory, though, for almost at once she heard a stirring behind her.

She didn’t have the strength to turn, and so she waited while the strange woman circled around slowly in front of her. She had removed her hat, and her hair hung loose around her shoulders. Gabrielle was surprised to see that, despite the woman’s olive complexion, she was blonde. It was not the airy almost-white blonde of Gabrielle’s own hair, but a heavy golden color. Blonde with ambitions of some darker shade. She knelt, and Gabrielle was uncomfortable with the knowledge that the woman had watched her struggles a moment ago, had watched her sleeping before that. She wondered how long she had been unconscious.

“Four days.”

The words were not spoken, but they appeared fully formed in her mind. Not words themselves, but impressions. The shape that four days made was there, the idea.

Of course, they would not have a language in common, but the attempt at communication encouraged her. After everything she had done to escape this woman, now that they were face to face, Gabrielle felt herself overburdened by questions.

“Ask what you like.”

Again, the words in her mind that were less words than figures. Brands heated in a fire that gave off no light, and pressed on in abject darkness.  
“Who are you?” she said.

“A creature like you in some ways, and in others very different. My name is Oiropata. I was brought into this existence two thousand years ago.”

Gabrielle was struck by the enormity of it. The woman was older even than Marius, and yet she seemed no worse off for it. In fact, she seemed remarkably untroubled compared to the members of the Paris coven that Gabrielle had left behind.

Oiropata gave her an unsympathetic look. “Think you I have been carefree all these centuries? You are not the only one who has strayed far from the place of your birth.”

She rose, pushing straight up from her crouch. In that moment, Gabrielle saw all the accumulated strength and grace of her many centuries, and she was caught between the urge to draw closer in fascination and the compulsion to shrink back in horror. Then Oiropata was moving away from her, and there was nothing in the swing of her hips or the fall of her feet to suggest she was anything other than a woman. She picked up a burlap sack from next to the fire, reached inside and drew out a coil of white fur. It was a mink, bony from its winter fast; alive, but docile in her hands, bewitched by her. After four days with no blood, Gabrielle’s hunger had gone dormant. It awoke now, and her body reverberated with it. Every empty cell ached and hummed like a small, separate stomach.

Gabrielle shuddered, and Oiropata came back to crouch before her again. She held out the dazed mink in both hands, as if the simple offer of food was imbued with religious significance. Gabrielle fell on the small creature, tore it open and drained it in less than a second. When she finished, her chest was heaving and her eyes bright as if the effort had exhausted her.

She looked up at Oiropata, who was wearing a stern expression, as if considering whether she ought to scold Gabrielle for her bad manners. It was a look Gabrielle knew well from having raised three boys, and she blushed to see it directed at her. Of course, she thought, of course she was nothing more than a child in Oiropata’s eyes. She was but an awkward, graceless girl who might, one day, grow into her promise.

“Do you always travel alone?” Gabrielle asked suddenly. “Are there no others like you in this wild country?”

“There were never many,” Oiropata said. “Human prey has always been scarce in places such as these. But in the days before the Persians, there were six. Then two left to play at godhood. Then one was weary and went into the sun, and one went away to the court of the Great King and did not return. Then one did not survive the fire, for she was young and had always been frail. I did not set eyes on another like myself, not until you came.”

“You must have thought you were the only one…” Gabrielle murmured.

Oiropata smiled, then immediately swallowed the expression. “I did not. But maybe you are surprised I did not seek out the others?”

“No, in fact, I’m not surprised at all. I’ve come all this way alone. There’s something to be said for solitude.”

Oiropata did not reply. Her gaze flicked down to Gabrielle’s hand. She still clutched the bloodless body of the mink, and her hands had convulsed around it while she spoke, crushing the delicate bones and grinding it into a shapeless mass of fur. Oiropata plucked it from her grip and went to throw it outside the cave.

Gabrielle watched her go, secretly dreading the moment she would return, terrified that she would ask about her own self-imposed exile. Many times, Gabrielle had asked herself why the desire to leave everything behind had come so strongly, so desperately, but she had never been able to give herself a satisfactory answer. She had spent too many years ignoring the urges of her heart and now she could not hear them even when she listened.

Only after she had gone into the mountains had she begun to understand. For when the rushing wind rang in her ears, and the oxygen was so scarce that her head sounded like a choir of bells, then for the first time did the small voice that had plagued her since her youth fall silent. It was that voice that condemned her for her lack of devotion to her husband, her lack of love for her sons, even for her inability to die with quiet humility, so that her passing might inconvenience the men of the house as little as possible.

It was their expectations from which she had fled. From Lestat’s questioning glances; the way he thought it made him proud and dignified to never say what he wanted. The truth was, it only made him difficult.

Gabrielle would have been able to bear it if it were only Lestat, but she remembered Eleni on her last trip to Paris, scrutinizing her with wanting in her eyes, and unspoken question quivering on her lips. Gabrielle had felt pinned and hopeless before her, and she had retreated in fear.

She had failed to do what was expected of her, failed at the tasks for which she had been trained since birth, and for a time Gabrielle had begun to believe the things people said about her: that she was a frail soul, as weak in spirit as she was in body. Then had come her rebirth, a second chance to prove that she wasn’t weak. No, not strong in the ways that they wanted her to be, but strong all the same…

Oiropata crouched down beside her again, and Gabrielle started as if caught at some suspicious business. The blood she had drunk a moment ago hadn’t been much, but it was enough to color her cheeks. Gabrielle looked away, embarrassed, but she didn’t have to be watching Oiropata’s face to know that her expression was the same one as a moment ago: a smile, quickly hidden.

“The sun will rise soon,” she said. “We ought to rest here tonight. I’ll stop up the entrance and the light won’t get in.”

Gabrielle dared a glance back at her. The wind at the mouth of the cave had disarrayed her clothing, and the robe she wore was open a little at the throat so it gapped enough to show the tops of her breasts. They were full and heavy, the youngest part about her, for Oiropata’s real age when she had been brought across was impossible to say.

The direction of her gaze seemed to amuse Oiropata more than anything.

“It flatters an older woman to be admired,” said her voice, wryly, in Gabrielle’s head. “As for you, I think you will have much to discover in the times ahead.”

With that, she rose again and went to pick the entrance of the cave tight with snow. She said no more on the subject, and Gabrielle could not bring herself to ask.


	3. For if she flees, soon she'll pursue

She spent the winter with Oiropata, learning how to resist the season’s savage currents. Gabrielle had thought that, now that there was no reason to go deeper into the mountains, they would certainly return to the flat security of the steppe. The climb seemed to exhilarate Oiropata, though, and, day after day, as her strength slowly returned, Gabrielle watched Oiropata stare thoughtfully up at the icy peaks. Sometimes she would vanish for a moment, then reappear several hundred meters up the slope, balanced precariously on an outcropping that had been invisible from below.

Gabrielle dreaded the ascent, but it was not memories of her fall that made her nervous. She had the innate fearlessness of external circumstances that all of their kind acquired after the change, but she was plagued by a lingering suspicion that she had climbed as high as she was meant to.

Still, after a week of restless recuperation, seven days of dining on thin tasteless animal blood, Gabrielle had to agree that it was time to go.

Oiropata was visibly relieved. She didn’t have the patience that her many long centuries of life suggested. There had never been a time when she had not lived as a nomad, and even short periods of inactivity made her restless. This was what Gabrielle had managed to gather about her. They never spoke to each other aloud, and she had come to know the other woman only as a collection of impressions and intuitions.

It was an intimate, mysterious communion, and Gabrielle did not know if she and Oiropata were now inseparable companions, or only two travelers who happened to be going the same way.

They did not discuss when they would begin their journey, but one evening Gabrielle awoke to find Oiropata’s horse waiting patiently outside the cave and she knew that the time had come.

The pony was of the study, indestructible breed that dominated the steppes of Asia. Its ancestors had been amongst the first animals domesticated, and it was amongst the least changed from those days. Oiropata seemed to spare the animal little thought. She left it alone to graze, and the pony broke the hard crust on top of the snow with its front hooves and dug down to the frozen grass beneath, on which it survived quite comfortably. It had small, hooded, disdainful eyes; its winter coat was thick and matted, and its mane was almost long enough to drag on the ground.

Oiropata gathered their blankets into a bundle, tossed them over the pony’s back, and secured them with a line. She took hold of the bridle and let out the slack so the horse followed several paces behind and Gabrielle could walk at her side.

“Will we be on the other side of the mountains soon?” Gabrielle asked. It was the first time she had spoken about the journey ahead of them, and she knew that she had let her doubts show.

“No,” Oiropata said. “We still have some ways to go. The worst is still ahead of us.”

They were climbing now – a shallow ascent – walking sideways for traction on the ice. Gabrielle kept talking, focusing all her thoughts on the trick of making the ideas take shape in Oiropata’s mind. If she concentrated hard enough, she would forget to look down.

“You must know the way well.”

“I made the crossing once before,” Oiropata replied. “Coming from the west.”

“Where are you from, Oiropata?” Gabrielle asked. “I mean… in the beginning.”

“Sarmatia,” Oiropata said.

The name was familiar to Gabrielle, but she had to think back to her life before she could place where she knew it from. In the library of her husband’s estate, there had been a threadbare copy of the Histories in a decent translation. It was not considered proper reading for a woman, and so Gabrielle had hidden it and read it in secret. Sarmatia had appeared there, on the roster of names of dead kingdoms, and Gabrielle had the distinct feeling that if she could only remember what the book had said, she would begin to understand the woman with her, the crossing they were making.

"An Amazon!" The words slipped from her mouth before she realized what she said.

"Some called us that." Oiropata laughed. "Soft Greeklings with their dainty skirts. But we were always people of the wind and the plains." Her expression grew soft, distant, remembering a different wind that swept not down from the icy slopes, but one that rippled endless grass like waves.

"In those days, I was a warrior," Oiropata said simply, as if stating that she had been a weaver or a farmer or a mother. "I was not to marry until I killed a man myself, without help. It was not hard in those days. I did it by the time I was thirteen, stealing horses from a Greek outpost. But then many men of my tribe were killed in a Scythian raid..."

"What happened?"

"I married a pretty young widow I had my eye on. She was five years older and had many small children. A good breeding girl. All but one of those children lived to become warriors. I taught them how to fight myself."

"A widow? Girl?" Gabrielle stared, unsure of what to make of this sudden revelation. It shocked her to her core, and yet she was intrigued. She wanted Oiropata to tell her more, make her understand everything…

"Yes, of course. I kept her as well as any man could, and I satisfied her in every way." Oiropata caught her eye. "It was the custom of my people, and I assure you it worked just fine."

***  
On the fourth day, they saw their first sign of civilization.

As the mountains gave way to foothills, they came upon a single family of herders. There were eight of them in all – three generations – to tend a flock of five hundred. It was a bold and lonely existence, and if the circumstances had been different, Gabrielle would have silently passed them by. But she weak with hunger, and there was no telling when she’d have a chance at human blood again. They took them in their sleep, so quickly and precisely that, of the eight, not a single one uttered a cry. They gorged themselves on blood, and then, too full to move, rolled up in their blankets and dozed beside the smoldering fire.

They had come through the mountains alive. A week ago, it had seemed impossible, and now that it was over, Gabrielle hardly felt any sense of triumph at all. There was only the familiar need to go further, to keep pressing on.  
She had assumed Oiropata would leave her once the crossing was complete, but when she awoke the next evening, Oiropata was already up, and looking towards the west.

Gabrielle didn’t know what had made her change her mind, but she suspected that Oiropata had been lonelier than even she herself had realized.

Whatever her reasoning, Gabrielle made sure that Oiropata saw that she was pleased. They had travelled well together. Oiropata was silent and contemplative, speaking only when she had something important to say. It had made Gabrielle reflect on her journeys with Lestat: his incessant chatter, his moods, his insistence that they visit every smart hotel or site of historical interest but that they never stay long enough for it to become tedious. Gabrielle had always felt a swelling of pride when she saw him in high spirits, the master of every situation; but when he was around, she’d never had the quiet she needed to search out her own small joys.

However, as they went on, Oiropata began to show signs of uncertainty. Where once she had led them effortlessly, now she hesitated and even fell behind for stretches and let Gabrielle choose the route. By the time the foothills flattened into grassland, she seemed to have lost her way entirely. Gabrielle told her, “If we go southwest from here, we’ll soon be following the old Silk Road. If we go north, we’ll meet with the Russian frontier.”

Oiropata nodded thoughtfully, but said nothing. Gabrielle wondered if she understood at all.

As gently as she could, worried lest Oiropata’s ancient pride be injured, Gabrielle suggested that they go north and find a Russian outpost. There, they might at least have a decent meal and some news from Europe.

Going was easier now that they were on the steppe, and they covered a hundred miles in a night. They ate as they went, snatching small animals out of the grass as they ran, barely even breaking stride. Oiropata had taught her to drink in sips for most of the night, to put off the kill that filled her until the last hour before the sun rose. That way, she went into the ground rosy and warm and the heat from her body quickly filled her small grave.

In the mountains, they had dug their graves wherever there was space, and they had not often been able to sleep near each other. Now that the terrain was flat, though, they bedded down side-by-side, and, more often than not, they shared a single grave, spending the day fast asleep in each other’s arms.

At first, Gabrielle had been intimidated, but Oiropata’s embraces were invariably filial and chaste. Sometimes this disappointed Gabrielle, and sometimes she felt only relief.

The story Oiropata had told about her mortal family had not left Gabrielle’s mind. She took it out once in a while; thought it over, turned it around and looked at it from every direction. She did not think that Oiropata would hesitate to give her details about her marriage if she asked for them, but Gabrielle kept her questions to herself. Though she was curious, she feared what Oiropata might say, and how it would affect her.

But she often thought it must have been a little like the journey they were undertaking now, a companionship rather than a partnership, a union in which no one had to become what she was not, no one had to try to fit a shape into which no human being had been meant to squeeze.

***

The days grew longer quickly. One evening Gabrielle awoke and found the ground covered in a thick layer of mud: the frost had melted during the day. As brutal as the winter had been, it had also been short; it had exhausted its fury in a little under two months.

They came across another lonely family. Again, they feasted and spent an entire night recovering, but this time Gabrielle could not enjoy the rest. She knew that they were close to the frontier now, and she was ready for the comforts of the city. She was eager, too, for a chance to play expert and host to Oiropata.

As they lay side by side on the floor of the ger, with their feet propped up by the fire, Gabrielle said, “I haven’t given any thought to where I’ll go after this. I wonder if it’s too soon to see the New World. I’ve hardly exhausted the wonders of the Old…”

Oiropata made no reply, and at first Gabrielle thought that she had dozed off. But when she glanced over, she saw that her eyes were open, staring fixedly in the fire.

***

The next evening, they came to a river, and they followed it north until they reached a knot of buildings. The town seemed to have sprung up like some strange tree from the surrounding steppe. A dirt road began about a mile out from the southern gate, ran arrow-straight between the houses on the right bank, and then ended about a mile beyond the northern gate, sliding back beneath the grass.

There were a handful of brick buildings along the river, wooden houses, bridges with familiar classical arches. It was an ugly town, a hastily assembled outpost military outpost staffed by Russian officers who were either incompetent or unlucky, but to Gabrielle it seemed charming in its familiarity.

She quickened her pace, and she had gone on some ways before she realized Oiropata was no longer beside her. Puzzled, Gabrielle looked back. Oiropata was standing motionless beside the river, holding the horse’s bridle slackly in one hand.

All at once, Gabrielle realized that she was not surprised. “You’re not coming with me, are you?” she said.

Oiropata shook her head. Her golden hair moved heavily over her shoulders. Sometimes she wore it in long braids, like a schoolgirl would in Europe, but tonight it was loose and somehow that made it harder, almost impossible, to look at.

Gabrielle walked toward her slowly. The ripple of the grass gave the illusion of never drawing any closer, as if she might walk for a century and still have this space between them.

“Will you live another thousand years in those mountains?” Gabrielle said. “Never seeing any of the world beyond your little kingdom? Never curious, never wanting, never hoping for anything more? At least I shall know where to find you if I need you…”

But here she stopped, for she had realized the truth: Oiropata was not inviting her back.

Gabrielle wrapped her arms around herself as if she had been dealt a blow. “Did you only use me, then?” she whispered.

“Beautiful Gabrielle, you are precious to me as my own blood. But I can follow you no further. I will not seek the cities, lest they hunt me in return.”

“You’re frightened,” Gabrielle said. “You live in the wilderness because you’re running away.”

“Yes,” Oiropata replied. “But then, aren’t we all?”

She bent in for a kiss. Gabrielle presented her cheek out of habit, but Oiropata caught her by the chin and turned her. Her lips were smooth, still yielding like a human’s but with the texture and weight of a marble statue. They suggested neither dryness nor damp, but they were surprisingly warm.

Gabrielle’s eyes fluttered shut and she felt herself moving up into the kiss. She was aware of the pressure of Oiropata’s breasts against her chest, the curve of her waist beneath her arm, strands of her hair caressing her cheeks. She felt herself lifted, lifted, as if in a dream of flight.

“Find yourself, my darling,” Oiropata’s voice said in her mind, and then she was gone.

By the time Gabrielle opened her eyes again, both horse and rider had vanished into the great mystery that surrounded them.


	4. What country maiden charms thy heart

In the frontier outpost of Omsk, Gabrielle had her first news from Paris in more than two years.

Her heart sank when she learned that the Revolution still raged. Unable to separate the true stories from the rumors, she assumed the worst. The politics of mortals had long since ceased to interest her, but this was different. It threatened their kind as well.

She was worried for the Theatre des Vampires. Gabrielle had read enough history to know that the open disdain for authority the theatre had shown in its performances always played well in the time leading up to a revolution, but after a new authority had been established, the last thing it wanted was artists that might turn on it at a moment’s notice.

Eleni was cautious, Gabrielle assured herself. She was wise, and so many years spent underground had inclined her towards distrust. But Armand still held a master’s sway over her, and he was so given to rash action that Gabrielle could not say what he would do.

She considered booking passage for Paris, but she knew that it would be almost six months before she arrived. Eleni was likely long since fled from the city, and by the time Gabrielle arrived her trail would be cold.

It didn’t seem right that she should be able to disappear so easily. She had been Gabrielle’s last familiar port, and she knew now that she was truly alone. For all her wandering, she had liked knowing that she had a place to go to if she needed it. During her life, she had been passed from the hands of her governess to her tutors, from her parents to her husband, with such efficiency that she had never known what it was like to be cut loose into the world.

Lestat would have arrived in the French colonies by now. He would be busy establishing himself. He was beyond the reach of his old life now, beyond her reach, which was what she had always wanted for him. And yet, how lonely to know that he was truly gone.

That spring, when the ground thawed, Gabrielle descended into it with the intention of sleeping for some time. No one had told her of the Long Sleep that their kind must take from time to time, but Gabrielle had sensed the possibility of it by instinct. As she drifted in the Lethian haze, she had clear visions of Lestat and Oiropata. But when she tried to think Eleni, her face grew hazy in Gabrielle’s mind. She could barely remember her at all.

***

When she awoke next, it was with a powerful start, as if shaken by some great noise.

She lay in the darkness, feeling the press of the earth upon her, listening to her heart pound in anticipation. The noise that had awakened her did not come again. Her metabolism had slowed so much that what had felt like a sudden wrenching out of sleep might very well have taken place over the course of hours, even days.

Once she realized this, she became acutely aware of the passage of time. Three times she slept and woke before she had sufficiently rallied her strength enough to move. She stirred one hand enough to break up some of the earth that surrounded it and give herself room to move. Afterwards, she was exhausted, and she slipped back into dreams, almost back into the Long Sleep. It was tempting, and it would be so easy…

She was awakened again by the sensation of something brushing against her hand. She moved enough to hook one finger around it, pulling it into her grip. It was a fat, blind subterranean snake. Gabrielle brought it to her mouth, but hunger had made her clumsy and her fangs tore rather than pierced. She swallowed skin and bones in an attempt to get to the blood. Afterwards, she felt nauseous and feverish.

But the flood revived her. She found that she could move more easily, and she used her returning strength to chip away at the walls of her grave. As she went, she encountered more snakes, rodents, even insects, and she fed on them all with impunity.

She had lost all sense of direction, and it amused her to think that she might only be digging herself deeper into the earth. Then, on the sixth night, her hand broke through the topsoil and she felt the cool breath of the evening air on her fingertips.

Then she was struggling, fighting her way free of the earth. The bars of a wooden cage tried to contain her, but she splinted them with a strike from her palm. Then her arms were free, and she was grabbing at handfuls of grass, pulling them up as she groped for a handhold. She found it at last in the form of an iron bar anchored to the ground. Gabrielle seized it in both hands and wrenched herself upright.

Her head broke the surface. She gasped, gulping burning lungfuls of air. All the while she had been underground, she had not taken a breath, and the flood of oxygen into her limbs was like being submerged in fire.

She screamed, but the steppe around her was too vast. It swallowed up the sound. Inexplicably, that delighted her. She was laughing now, but it did not sound so very different from her screams.

Gabrielle pulled herself free of the grave. By moonlight, she could see a highway laid out before her, dark in the center but edged by two beams of steady silver light. Beneath her, she could feel the stiff grass and the sandy earth, but she could feel wood and metal, too; the remnants of men.

It was a railroad, she realized. They had built it over where she slept, and the sound that had awakened her had been the first train going by.

They had come for her, she thought. They had sent a beam of light into her darkness, wrenched her out of exile. And she was glad, yes, glad to be alive. Glad not to be forgotten. So glad that at first she didn’t even think about what a shame it was to domesticate the wild steppe with something so dull and predictable as a locomotive.

Her legs were cramped and bloodless, and when she tried to stand they buckled beneath her. With another cackle of mad laughter, Gabrielle rolled off the tracks and into the weedy ditch that ran alongside them. She crawled through the grass for a while, seizing nesting birds and field mice and draining them into her thirsty throat. She had never known she could be so hungry. The long fasts she had gone on while crossing the mountains with Oiropata were fond memories compared to this. She drank and drank, thinking only of the moment she would be strong enough to take a human.

Her clothes were in rags, and she could feel the tickle of the grass against her exposed skin, the gentle caress of the breeze. Each new touch was like agony after so long without, and she stopped several times to press her forehead to the earth and close her eyes until the sensation abated.

It was during one of these rests that Gabrielle felt the breeze stop entirely. A soft tremor passed through her body, as if some very small creature had tread upon the ground nearby. Panting for breath, Gabrielle lifted her eyes, and before her there were a pair of dainty feet. Perplexed, Gabrielle looked up and found the feet attached to legs, and the legs, in turn, attached to a body that almost passed for human.

Gabrielle tried to reel back, but the vampire seized her before she could move. It wrenched Gabrielle to her feet, hard enough to make her teeth rattle. It clutched her close and Gabrielle felt her ribs creak in its embrace. It had long ago forgotten how to be tender, if it had ever known, and even when it tilted its head and pressed Gabrielle’s mouth to its throat, there was only efficiency and weary tolerance in the gesture.

She rent the smooth column of its throat with her teeth, and in its blood she tasted its disdain for her, its dislike of being touched. Gabrielle didn’t care. She latched on, drinking in great gulps. When the creature pushed her back, she fought with it, though she was quickly overpowered and thrown to the ground.

“Thou art a wretched little ghost,” it sneered at her in a woman's voice, dark and dripping. “Thou crawlest on thy belly with serpents.”

Gabrielle laughed, startling herself with the sound of her own voice. She formed the shape of words with her lips before she managed to speak them aloud. Her voice was a rasp. “I can tell you haven’t spoken French in a while. I know enough Russian, if you’d prefer that.”

The vampire's lips pursed as if to speak, but then she swept off her heavy woolen cloak. Underneath she wore a dress of black crepe, simple but exquisitely tailored. Her eyes were huge and dark, and her skin was the color of white marble. The affect was striking; she seemed to have stepped from a world without color.

“Cover thy rags,” she said, averting her eyes as she tossed Gabrielle her cloak.

Gabrielle wasn’t particularly troubled by her nakedness, but the other woman didn’t seem to like it. She pulled it around half-bare shoulders. Clutching it closed at the throat, she caught the faintest whiff of perfume on the cloak, the scent of lavender and herbs of the field that clung to its woolen folds.

“Listen,” Gabrielle said, attempting to sound contrite. “I can see I’ve intruded on your territory. I’ll move on, if you like. I don’t want any trouble.”

“This is not my territory. I should not have ever set foot in such a place as this were it not for you.”

“I?” Gabrielle echoed. She was baffled, flattered, alarmed. All these things at once when she thought that this powerful creature might have been searching for her.

“I saw into your dreams as you awoke. The face of the Ancient One, the horsewoman. She showed herself unto you.”

“You mean Oiropata? Yes, I saw her. But that was so long ago. It must have been…” She paused. “I don’t know. Can you tell me what year it is?”

“Thou hast slept long enough. That’s all you need to know.”

Gabrielle scowled, but did not press the issue. She had the feeling that she wouldn’t get anywhere arguing with this woman. She was a creature of great age and tremendous power, and she had clearly been counting on this being enough to intimidate Gabrielle.

It ought to have been, and yet Gabrielle found herself fascinated, transfixed, but ultimately unafraid. “Who are you?” she asked.

“I am called Pandora,” the vampire replied.

“What do you want with Oiropata?”

“I know her.”

Gabrielle was skeptical. “She said she only ever knew a handful of other vampires. The way she talked about them, it seemed like they were all dead. You don’t really seem like you could be one of them.”

“I said that I knew her,” Pandora replied stiffly. “Not that she knows me.”

“I don’t know what to say to you,” Gabrielle said with a shrug. “I never would have found her if she hadn’t approached me first. I think she was curious. It might be another century before she shows herself again.”

Pandora turned away, but before she did it seemed that her expression betrayed a small, brittle undercurrent of uncertainty. It was only there for a moment, but Gabrielle saw it clearly. She felt a sudden tenderness toward this woman, for it seemed that she might meet a thousand of their kind and not one would be free of these secret fears and longings.

Gabrielle struggled to her feet. Her legs were still weak beneath her, prickling with pins and needles, but they seemed to hold her well enough. “How did you know Oiropata?”

Pandora glanced back, clearly surprised by the question. “Pardon me?”

“I thought she was a truly remarkable woman. I know that becoming a vampire doesn’t make someone strong. They have to be like that before the change. I always admired how strong she was. I was just wondering how you knew her.”

Gabrielle watched with some amusement as Pandora weighed her suspicions against her desire to confess. She thought herself aloof and distant, but in fact Gabrielle could guess her thoughts easily. There was no need for telepathy; nothing like that. A sharp eye and a little intuition was all that was required.

“Ever since I was a girl,” Pandora began slowly, “I have dreamed of other lives. People who were not me, and yet they were. And I was them, before I was the woman you see before you now.”

“Are you saying that your soul--?”

“Not that,” Pandora said sharply. “It was not a soul. But imagine a small kernel of knowing – awareness – lifted out of one body at the moment of death and forced into the next at the moment of birth. Imagine this happening countless times, back to the days of the earliest human consciousness.”

“Why do you remember these other lives and no one else does?”

“I don’t know,” Pandora replied. She sighed, her breast swelling with it, and the crepe of her dress rustled softly. It was a bewitching sound. “But I know what I have seen. And there is one life that I remember with particular clarity, for in that life I was one of us.”

She seemed to see something in Gabrielle’s expression then that she did not like, for she snapped, “I care not if you disbelieve.” She tossed her head as if to throw back her dark hair. Alas, Gabrielle thought, it was pinned too tightly about her head to swing free. It seemed a tragedy.

“I don’t… disbelieve,” Gabrielle said. “But it seems like such a fantastic story. After all, Oiropata made so few fledglings.”

“She was not my maker, but her sire was. It was in the days after the Persian Empire fell to Greece, and a Macedonian king kept court in the city of Babylon. I was the eldest daughter of the displaced king, called Stateira, and I was kept in comfort in the city of my birth. The vampire came down from the steppe one day, and insinuated himself into the royal court. He had heard of the Greeks’ plans to build cities across Asia. He had come to gather information, but he stayed, I think, for the same reason we all congregate in cities.”

Gabrielle frowned thoughtfully. Oiropata had said that one of her flock had vanished into a royal court. She did not know how Pandora could have guessed it.

“He took a liking to me,” Pandora said. “To Stateira, rather. When the Greek empire crumbled, she was suddenly an easy target, and he took pity on her. He gave her the blood, and together they fled to Egyptian Alexandria. He was truly a provincial boy. There were dangers he could not imagine awaiting him in the city. He was set upon by the Egyptian coven, the oldest in existence, and they tore him to pieces and scattered the scraps across the desert. His young one was alone, not even a year old, and orphaned.”

Gabrielle nodded thoughtfully. It made sense, as far as she could see. It seemed to fit Oiropata’s code of honor. “But she…”

“The horsewoman came in good time. She took the girl in. She was not as a maker to me, but she was a good and kind elder sister. We had two centuries together.”

“And then what happened?” Gabrielle asked. She still wasn’t entirely sure she believed all this, and yet why shouldn’t she? Why should this be impossible when so much else was not?

“I told you, then I died. There was a fire, and she was consumed. I was consumed.”

“That’s a strange story, Pandora.”

“Think of it what you will,” Pandora said, but it was nothing more than a proud affectation. Gabrielle could tell that this was the sort of woman to whom being taken seriously meant a great deal.

“It’s not that I don’t believe you. But I wonder… do you think she would recognize you if she saw you?”

“Almost certainly not. But I can tell her things that no other living creature ought to know. I could make her believe, if I could only talk to her.”

“Why go to all the trouble, though?”

“I owe her much,” Pandora said.

“It sounds like you don’t owe her anything. Some girl who died almost two millennia ago owes her, and the best that you can offer are her words coming out of your mouth.”

Pandora did not reply. She stared at Gabrielle, her expression registering neither shock nor hurt, though Gabrielle would not have been surprised by either. She might have even felt a little guilty, if it seemed that was what Pandora wanted. But she was still in the midst of the long process of waking up, and so she could be forgiven for a lapse in discretion.

“I’m going down to the river to get cleaned up,” Gabrielle said. “Then I’m going to go see if there’s anything left of the town that I recognize.”

Pandora did not stop her, but as she went she wondered if she had not been unnecessarily cruel. Wasn’t Pandora just searching, like all of them were, for an explanation of it all?

Briefly, she thought of going back and apologizing, but she didn’t think Pandora would appreciate the gesture. In fact, Gabrielle thought, she had probably been lucky Pandora had let her walk away with her life; she seemed a woman of great pride and powerful whims. But the thought raised no specter of fear in her, and Gabrielle even chuckled a little to herself as she shed her clothes and plunged into the river.

The cold water was a shock, and Gabrielle came up out of it gasping for air. Her body was still over-sensitive, but starved all the same for any sensation. She ducked her head again beneath the water and felt the coldness burn her skin, as if she were submerged in fire. She stayed under for as long as she could bear, and when she surfaced again she knew at once that she was being watched.

Pandora stood on the riverbank, tall and upright, black against the black of the sky. And Gabrielle was struck with the sudden notion that she was not meant to wear black all the time, and that her dress, exquisitely tailored though it may have been, was a poor and gaudy covering for her flesh.

“Why don’t you come out here?” Gabrielle called impulsively. “The water’s cold, but you get used to it quick enough.”

Pandora’s gaze sharpened, and Gabrielle felt a hot pulse of blood at her temples. When Pandora reached up to loosen the buttons at her throat, the glimpse of white flesh she revealed burned like a beacon before Gabrielle’s eyes.

Her head was swimming. She could not look away as Pandora shed the chrysalis of her clothing and emerged, ivory and gleaming as a statue. Her hair, piled atop her head, unbound itself as she stepped forward, tumbling over her shoulders, coyly obscuring her breasts like a painting of Venus. At that moment, she seemed transformed into the proud princess of her past life.

She waded out into the water, and though she did not react to the cold, her flesh seemed to grow firmer, tauter. “Is this what you wanted?” she said in a voice that seemed suddenly hoarse and raw.

“Yes…” Gabrielle murmured, helpless to do anything but agree.

Pandora closed in on her like the night, and Gabrielle felt herself enfolded by inhuman arms. Pandora was cold to the touch – colder than Oiropata had been even after their longest fast – and smooth as marble. She was all the horror and all the ecstasy of a statue given life.

Gabrielle tilted her face up and Pandora kissed her. It was fierce, unyielding, cruel. Pandora launched herself into it as if into battle. Her hands moved in patterns both familiar and unreal, grazing over Gabrielle’s shoulders, her breasts. They cut trails through the water that glazed her belly, curled around her narrow hips.

Her feet had left the ground long ago, and Gabrielle felt herself floating. It was as if all her fears of being set aimlessly adrift had come to pass, but she saw now that there was no need to be afraid at all. She let the current buoy her as it would, and, no, she was not lost at all…

***

Gabrielle awoke with a splitting headache and an overpowering thirst.

She was laid out in a coffin – she couldn’t remember the last time she had slept in one of those – with the lid closed tight over her. She pushed it back and rose to find herself in a comfortable, furnished room. She could smell the river nearby and the smoke and cordite of the railroad, and she knew that she was still Omsk.

In the bed, there was a youth of seventeen of eighteen, dozing with his arms crossed over his chest in the attitude of death. He was very much alive, though, and the pulse of his heart called to her. Gabrielle did not pause to think who had been so considerate as to provide a meal for her. She fell upon him and drained him instantly, barely even tasting what she drank.

She remembered everything now. She had been in the river, and Pandora had come out to join her. But she had still been weak from her long slumber, weaker than she had thought, for she had swooned suddenly. Her knees had given out, but Pandora’s arms had been a sweet vice around her, holding her close as she went down into darkness…

Then it must have been Pandora who brought her here. She had obviously departed soon after, for there was no hint of her ancient presence left in the city.

Her lips still itched and ached where she had been kissed, as if Pandora had left something there to mark her. Gabrielle could not imagine why she had done it; she did not think a woman like Pandora could have seen anything of interest in a woman like her. Perhaps she had only been looking for signs that Oiropata had left behind.

There was a telegram envelope on the table beside the bed. The note inside was written in swooping, over-elaborate script. Gabrielle had no interest in what it might say, but she read it over all the same.

 _Little Ghost,_

 _I bestow upon thee this city and the wild lands that lay about it. But comest thou not into my domain of Petrograd, lest I hunt thee there._

 _Pandora_

Gabrielle frowned, balling up the note and tossing it into the fire. It was just like her, she thought. Just like her to think that Gabrielle would want to follow her.


	5. To one who loved not poetry

It was in Berlin, after the Great War.

Gabrielle had spent much of that hideous decade deep in the few wild places left on earth: the Australian Outback, the Amazon, the Arctic Circle. Transportation in those years was fast, reliable, and frequent. Where once a trans-Atlantic crossing would have been weeks in the making, now Gabrielle needed only to haunt the shipping yards one evening until she found a freighter going her way.

She had gone further than she had ever dreamed, seen more than she had ever know existed, but still she had not been able to escape the sounds of the bombs.

The Revolution in France was the last human war in which Gabrielle had bothered to take a side. She had been dimly aware of the conflicts that came after, but she had not concerned herself with them. She had enjoyed a period of profound and willful ignorance, involving herself in the affairs of men only when they intruded into her solitude.

This time had been different, though. There was no remote corner where rumors of war had not penetrated, no language that did not know the word for bullet or tank or bomb. The world was becoming smaller, and Gabrielle felt it pressing in on her.

She found she had developed an acute claustrophobia.

The wild days of the world were over. All that remained now were tasteless imitations and gauche shadows , slowly fading with time. There seemed now no other choice but to go back to the cities to reorient herself, to see if anything could be different, better; or if there was now no choice left open to her but conformity.

Gabrielle chose Berlin as her destination because she did not want to see the scars the war had left on Paris. She had memories there, still fresh in her mind despite the many decades she had spent away.

She travelled cross-country on foot, feeling the landscape as she went, taking, like a river, the path of least resistance. She crossed vast desolate stretches that could only have been old fields of battle, and here she tread on artillery shells, and bullet casings, and human bones. But there were still beautiful places too: untouched fields and virgin forests. Gabrielle would come upon them suddenly. One minute she would be picking her way through coils of discarded barbed wire, and the next it would be as if no human had ever passed by.

On the third or fourth night, Gabrielle noticed that the eastern horizon had lightened considerably, so that there were almost no stars in that part of the sky. She knew that it was the glow of the city lights, and that her journey was almost at an end.

She bedded down early, digging herself a grave by the side of a small spring, amidst a grove of willows. The city pulled at her, as if it had a gravity all its own, and Gabrielle’s dreams that night were assailed by noise and color and confusion, at the center of which was the still white frivolous presence of others of her kind.

All things she hated. All things that fascinated her.

***

The next night, Gabrielle washed in the spring and changed into the spare set of clothes she had taken from the closet in a woodsman’s cottage a few evenings before. The cottage had been abandoned, a thick coat of dust had been upon all the furnishings, but the clothes were good enough.

By the light of the rising moon, Gabrielle slipped into the woolen trousers, coarse shirt and pea coat. She hacked her hair short – a ritual she almost never bothered with anymore – and pulled a billed cap low over her eyes. She had no mirror to see if the disguise was convincing, but she went now with more confidence than she had once had.

She made for the bright lights at the city’s center, where ex-patriots and poets congregated. There, she was not the only woman dressed as a boy, nor the only one with her hair shorn around her ears, and she felt shabby and provincial next to those polished cabaret girls. Gabrielle was used to absences from civilization, but it had been a long time since she had been so keenly aware that years had passed.

Gabrielle remembered that she had once considered Berlin safe, predictable, rather characterless amongst the European cities. A lot had changed, and Gabrielle couldn’t help but wonder if Lestat had been here yet. She thought that he might feel right at home amidst the anarchy, artistry, and aggressive sexuality; but she banished the idea quickly. She had not come this far to lose herself in memories of the past.

She crossed the artificially bright Alexanderplatz, affecting a confidence she did not entirely feel. She did not sense any other vampires, but she knew that they would be about, drawn to such a place as this, a city in ascent, like scavengers are drawn to carrion. Gabrielle did not think that she wanted to see any of them. Her last meeting with Pandora – so many years ago now that she had lost count – still unsettled her vaguely when she thought back on it. Better to keep to the beasts of the field; at least you could predict what they were going to do.

Already she was planning her return to them, and she was so absorbed by the thought that she almost walked past the poster tacked to the door of a dancehall. The girl painted on it was beautiful and dark. Her hair was shorter than the last time Gabrielle had seen her, and so was her skirt, but her eyes, her trim boyish hips, the vaguely unsmiling line of her lips were all the same.

It was unmistakably Eleni.

For almost a full minute, Gabrielle stood as if in a trance. Often during her long rambles through the wilderness, she had thought of the figures that composed her past – Lestat, Oiropata, Pandora – but never had she believed that the reappearance of once would affect her so.

Her mouth felt dry, and her body quivered with a repressed tension.

The poster was an advertisement for a ballet, an amateur home-grown affair based on a novel called _The Night Land_. The picture of Eleni had been hand painted none too skillfully, but it managed to capture her in a pose that was half-horrified and half-erotic. She wore a tattered white shift, split up one side so that her thigh was quite bare. Her hair was loose and in disarray. Formless black shadows encroached on all sides, suggesting danger.

Gabrielle read the whole thing over once, then again, and still she felt no closer to understanding. At the bottom of the poster, almost lost beneath the exquisite arch of Eleni’s bare foot, was printed an address and a list of dates. Gabrielle reached out suddenly, a motion too quick to be tracked by mortal eyes, and snatched the poster from the wall. She pressed it deep into the folds of her coat, hiding it there, as if she were a criminal who had come upon evidence of his sins, or a disgraced woman with proof of her shame.

***

The next evening, Gabrielle mixed with the crowd that had assembled outside the Victorian townhouse on the Oderberger Strasse. While the upper stories still housed apartments and a few shabby offices, the bottom floor had been converted into a theater. It had been done hastily, it seemed, for there was no sign above the door, only a larger version of the poster that had first attracted Gabrielle’s attention.

At this size, the flaws in the painting showed more readily. One of Eleni’s arms was bent at an impossible angle, and one of her eyes was set a little lower than the other. She still looked beautiful, daring, vulnerable. And Gabrielle wondered how many people had come to see this little ballet on the promise of that naked thigh alone.

She liked to think that her own reasons were more noble and pure, but earlier that night she had exchanged the suit of clothing she had taken from the peasant cottage for evening dress. Her black dinner jacket gleamed in the streetlights. The cut was dandyish and snug, and she had buttoned it all the way to the throat to disguise the outline of her breasts through her pleated shirt. She wore a black bow tie – the man at the shop had shown her how to tie it – and a stiff black bowler hat, and she felt utterly ridiculous. Eleni was not the type of woman to be taken in by a nice suit of clothes, but even if she were she would quickly see just how awkward and provincial the woman inside the suit was.

In the end, Gabrielle did not go into the theater. She took a table under the beer tent across the street and watered a potted plant with endless glasses of lager. When Eleni had been at the Theatre des Vampires, Gabrielle had never once gone to see her perform, and it seemed too late to start now. During her life, she had always found the ballet dull, and now that she was a vampire and her preternatural sight could pick out every missed cue and botched step, she found it intolerably artless too.

She thought that Eleni might be the one person who could ultimately change her mind on the subject, but Gabrielle had never tested the theory for fear of coming away disappointed.

Out here, it wasn’t so bad, though. She could still hear the music, very faintly, throbbing beneath the throb of the passing streetcars. The arrangement was strange, or rather it was modern: a viola, two cellos, spare woodwinds, and a snare drum. No violins, Gabrielle thought, and wondered if there was any significance to that. But she was hardly a critic of music.

As she heard the music stop and a pattering of applause rise in its place, Gabrielle dumped her most recent glass of beer and headed across the street. She cast a wary glance at the audience trickling out of the theater. They were not smiling, but they didn’t seem displeased either.

A group of uniformed American soldiers formed a tight knot by the alley that led back to the stage door. They were smoking small back cigarettes, and Gabrielle smelled the smoke as she slipped past them. She felt their brazen stares, and she dipped her head self-consciously.

She wished she could move confidently through the cities, navigate them half so well as she could the lost and barren places. No, no sense changing her mind about things now. She had chosen her path, and she had walked it well, and no silly girlish fantasy, no convent school dreams, could lure her from it now.

But what dreams she had…

A door near the back of the townhouse swung open, and a tall woman stepped out into the alley. She was dressed in a short black trench coat; unbuttoned and clutched hastily closed at the throat. Beneath the hem, her legs were bare, and her bare feet had been thrust into a pair of low-heeled shoes. The buckles flapped, undone, around her ankles.

She had a light step, and her expression suggested a deep, serene happiness, though she was not smiling at all.

Before Gabrielle could say her name, the woman saw her there. Her lips went back, showing the sharp tips of her canine teeth. She gave a short cry, startling the pack of Americans back on the sidewalk. By the time they looked, Eleni’s arms were around her neck, and Gabrielle was squirming and flushed beneath a hail of kisses.

“ _Ma soeur_ , _ma soeur_ …” Eleni gasped in her polished Parisian French. “You’ve come at last. Where have you been? No, never mind that now… Did you see me dance? Of course you didn’t. I would have felt it if you were there. What a wicked girl you are!”

“I only just arrived,” Gabrielle said. She had stopped struggling. The arms around her neck were not an unpleasant weight, though even in her low heels Eleni was a head taller. “I wanted to come. But the carriage – I mean, the train was late.”

Feeling a sudden flash of inspiration, she added, “They’re talking about you in Paris, of course.”

“Oh, I very much doubt that. I am not so sensational any more. I have my little theater, and sometimes things move me just so, and so I make little shows of them. The most shocking thing I do these days is employ mortals.”

She laughed, and Gabrielle laughed a little too, though not because of the joke.

When she raised her eyes, Eleni was looking at her tenderly. “Come inside while I get dressed. It was so intolerably hot under the lights. I just stepped out for some air, and look, I’ve let you see me looking quite a fright. Though I suppose you’ve seen me at my worst…”

“You’ve never looked better,” Gabrielle said quickly, impulsively.

Eleni’s smile deepened, the easy, confident smile of someone accustomed to receiving compliments. Her eyes flicked up, away from Gabrielle’s face, and she raised her hand briefly to wave at the American soldiers. They were watching intently now, chuckling around their cigarettes.

“Darling boys,” Eleni said. “I met them a few nights back. They’re shipping off for home soon, but they came to see me before they left. Imagine passing up all the pleasures of the city for that.”

She laughed, taking Gabrielle’s arm and leading her towards the propped stage door. Gabrielle glanced back, watching the Americans watch her knowingly.

“Of course, they’re going to have ideas now. You showing up dressed like that, so dashing. Let’s let them take it back home with them, shock all those Puritans living in the Colonies. What a dreadful place it must be. Why anyone in his right mind would make that crossing I will never know.”

She took Gabrielle inside, let the outside door fall shut, and then drew her into a cavernous dressing room. By the scrolled ceiling and the plaster molds on the walls,

Gabrielle knew it had been a bedroom before the house and been converted. Now it was cluttered with wardrobes and trunks, and the thick carpet was white with powder and flecked with pins, loose threads and other evidence of hasty mending jobs.

Eleni flung off her coat. Underneath it, she wore a white slip with a ragged hem and a gaudy silver breastplate. Up close, under the harsh lights, the chips in the silver paint showed.

When she began to undo the buckles on the breastplate, allowing one strap of the slip to slide off her shoulder, Gabrielle turned hastily away. She snatched up a handbill for the ballet that had been left out on the edge of the dressing table, and stared at the painted length of Eleni’s thigh, long and lean and flawed.

“The story,” she said quickly. “What is it about?”

“The end of the world,” Eleni said. Her clothes made rustling noises as she shed them, and Gabrielle did not look up at her. “The death of the universe. The sun burning out. It’s sort of a love story.”

She was silent now, which unsettled Gabrielle deeply. No, she could not look, could not let herself be drawn in. Here was the last place in the world that she belonged, and she would not tell herself otherwise. She refused to.

“These are subjects that interest me,” Eleni said softly. She put her hand on Gabrielle’s shoulder, a soft pleasant weight. Her fingers were very cool where they brushed against Gabrielle’s neck above her collar. For a moment, she did not recognize it for what it was.

Eleni leaned close, bending a little so her lips were close to Gabrielle’s ear. “Darling, let’s have no more of this foolishness.”

Gabrielle turned slowly, or rather she let Eleni turn her. She pulled close, now no longer knowing whether she moved of her own accord or under Eleni’s manipulations. When they kissed, though, it was Gabrielle who thrust back her chin, who parted her lips in anticipation…

She felt Eleni’s hands in her short hair, knocking the hat off her head. It struck the dressing table and then rolled away and was lost somewhere. Eleni backed her up against the edge of the table, and Gabrielle felt it cut into the small of her back. And she felt Eleni’s teeth grazing over her lips: cut and heal, cut and heal.

At last, she tilted her head back, breaking the kiss. Eleni was gazing down at her, expression composed, a bead of blood cooling on her lower lip.

“I knew you wanted to do that, darling,” she said. “And don’t accuse me of reading your mind to find it out. I never had to.”

“I never knew…” Gabrielle murmured. She reached up, touching her mouth. Her lips felt swollen and raw. “I didn’t think I was so obvious.”

Eleni laughed. She stepped away, catching hold of the straps of her slip and sliding them off her shoulders. She let the garment down, down. The line on her chest where her stage makeup ended showed up harsh against her pale skin.

She turned to hang the costume up, and Gabrielle watched her naked back, her high buttocks, her thighs so thickly corded with muscle they looked more like another pair of calves stacked on top of the first.

“I’m sorry…” Gabrielle stammered.

“Oh, darling. Spare me.”

“I mean for leaving.” Gabrielle swallowed hard. Her throat was dry. Surely Eleni would hear it, would say that she had known this, too, all along. “All those years ago. We quarreled about Lestat. I didn’t mean too. It’s a silly thing… he’s a stupid thing to fight over. He can take care of himself.”

Eleni looked back over her shoulder. Her hair had been bound up around her head while she was in costume, but it was starting to come loose now. A dark curl lay plastered to the back of her shoulder like a crack in porcelain.

“Lestat…” she said quietly. “There’s a name I haven’t thought of in some time. Neither Armand, nor Nikki, nor even my little Laurent. They’ve all gone their separate ways now, I suppose. For better or worse. It’s all right, darling. It was a different life. I’ve lived many since then. What about you?”

Gabrielle shook her head. “Only one, I think.”

“That’s a shame.”

“No, it has been good. Better now that you are here. I mean, to see you again…”

Here, she trailed off, unsure of how to finish. Eleni watched her expectantly for another moment, but then she waved her hand like the mistress of a smart salon, dispelling the awkward turn the conversation had taken.

“Well, if you change your mind, there’s no better time than now to start anew. The war is over. It was so bad this time, I think they’ve finally learned their lesson. At least for a little while.”

While Eleni talked, she scooped up a discarded dress from the back of a chair. She shook it out, and then pulled it on over her head, not bothering with undergarments first. While she removed her makeup before the mirror,

Gabrielle bent to look for her hat on the floor. She found it at last beneath a heap of petticoats, and she set it firmly back atop her head.

Eleni was busily rearranging her hair, and Gabrielle slid an arm around her waist, feeling the coolness of her skin beneath the flimsy cotton dress. She leaned against her, fitting her body up against Eleni’s back, feeling her muscles twitch minutely. All she needed to do was move a finger, and Gabrielle could feel the ripples all the way down her spine.

“Come away with me,” she said suddenly. “I know a place in the Gobi where you can see the Northern Lights for eight hours every night. Where the Milky Way is like an unbroken ribbon across the sky…”

“The Gobi? Where is that?”

“In the east.”

“The east? That’s where I come from. Thessaloniki. No, I don’t think there’s anything to see in that direction.”

“It only takes three weeks to get there,” Gabrielle said.

“Three _weeks_?” Eleni laughed. “Heavens, darling, I have another show tomorrow night.”

This time, it seemed the laugh was directed at her, and Gabrielle shrank back, embarrassed. Eleni caught her wrist before she could pull away, holding her arm tight around her waist. “Why don’t you stay here? Is it really that bad?”

“I don’t belong here,” Gabrielle replied.

Eleni finished arranging her hair, and she turned in Gabrielle’s arms, catching her by the collar so that she could not extricate herself.

“Neither do I,” Eleni said, stroking Gabrielle’s lapels thoughtfully. She tugged at her bow tie, straightening it. “Neither do any of us. That’s the worst part, you know. Get old enough, and you don’t belong anywhere. I bet you thought you were the only one who ever felt that way.”

“I didn’t…”

“You see, you’re not so special. You’re not really so all alone. I’m sorry if you preferred it that way, darling. I’ve learned to pretend. You can do that, you know, without ever losing sight of the truth.”

“I never thought of it that way,” Gabrielle admitted.

“Of course not. You’ve lived a very different life.” Eleni retrieved a hat trimmed with flowers from the dressing table and set it atop her head. “I cannot follow you there, but you can follow me here. At least for tonight.”

She took Gabrielle’s hand, fitting it smartly into the crook of her arm. “Come, darling. I know all the very best places.”

~The End


End file.
